Abstract
The effects of Brexit will reverberate for a long time. The first attempt to leave the EU has resulted in a constitutional stalemate between government and Parliament. Instead of healing the growing rift within both major parties and within the population, Brexit has exacerbated antagonisms and injected venom and discord into a debate that had been simmering for a long time. It has become the defining political topic for the present generation. The referendum majority was thin, arguments incomplete, distorted and downright fraudulent. Presumably there will be a third referendum on EU membership, but only after the current political storm has calmed down. That could take years, if not decades. Until then, and probably even beyond such a third referendum, the disputes will go on. The EU is well advised to keep the doors wide open for the United Kingdom. It should ask some penetrating questions about its own raison d’être and its finalité.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right
let us strive to finish the work we are in
Abraham Lincoln
Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live
John Milton
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Notes
- 1.
The dislike of Europe and the uncertainty about their own identity is a further parallel between British and Russian people. Russians are torn between ‘Westerners’ and ‘Eurasians’. They identify themselves primarily in that they are different from the USA and the allegedly decadent Western Europe.
- 2.
Hugo Young: This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair, New York, Overlook (1998).
- 3.
Andrew Adonis: Half in, half out: Prime Ministers on Europe, London, Biteback (2018).
- 4.
Examples include Thatcher’s support for the Single European Act in 1988, which included majority voting and the Exchange Rate Mechanism, Gordon Brown’s acceptance of Protocol 27 of the Lisbon Treaty, which justified the CJEU’s interpretation of the implications of the Single Market and its logic deduction from Article 3 TEU. The Werner Plan for a unified currency had been on the table since 1970. In 1972, all heads of government of the original Six approved it. This was the status quo when the United Kingdom joined. The first summit of the nine later in 1973 reaffirmed this commitment explicitly: “We affirm our intention to transform, before the end of the present decade, the whole complex of our relations into a European Union. We reaffirm our determination to achieve economic and monetary union.” (Conclusions of the Copenhagen Summit, 13.12.1973 (https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/02798dc9-9c69-4b7d-b2c9-f03a8db7da32/publishable_en.pdf, 9 Dec. 2018). It is simply not true that the British people or their government was kept in the dark about the ambitions and the dynamism of the other EU members.
- 5.
Opinion polls at the end of 2018 suggested a majority of 53% for Remain, 47% for Leave. The margin of error is far too large to base another referendum on such small differences. After all, until the eve of actual voting, all the opinion polls in 2016 predicted a comfortable majority for Remain. No second referendum would silence radical Leavers, let alone force them to accept such a decision. They would argue that victory has been snapped away from them unfairly. The campaign before such a repeated referendum would by far exceed everything we witnessed in 2016 in terms of vitriolic polemics, fake news, personal vilification and charges of treason, conspiracy and sabotage.
- 6.
Vernon Bogdanor: Beyond Brexit. Towards a British Constitution, London, I.B.Tauris (2019).
- 7.
How can the centre of the Commonwealth, a country that some 70 years ago ran the largest empire in world history be reduced to a rule taker to become a colony itself? The refrain of Rule Britannia reads: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”
- 8.
Future historians will be better placed to investigate how far foreign money played a role in the referendum campaign. George Soros has admitted that he supported Remain. The finances of the Leave campaign are shady. There are strong suspicions that Aaron Banks was involved in some lucrative projects with Russia, and these are currently under investigation. It would be of utmost importance to shed some light into the question how the campaign was actually financed and how far foreign money helped to shape the outcome.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
To be precise, Labour had withdrawal from the EEC in its manifesto in 1983. It was trounced in the election.
- 12.
This is disputed by some constitutional experts. But if a British government took this step, there would be little recourse left to reconsider or undo such a decision.
- 13.
Personal communication of the author.
- 14.
Vernon Bogdanor suggests that this is the ‘constitutional moment’ to formulate a written constitution for the United Kingdom.
- 15.
The unresolved West Lothian question.
- 16.
In Calais and Folkestone, controls are conducted jointly between British and French officers. There is no cogent reason why this arrangement should not be continued.
- 17.
See Sect. 3.2.
- 18.
Two other countries remained without occupation and were not involved in military operations: Spain and Portugal. Both faced a prolonged period of stagnation and serious problems when they finally modernised in the 1970s.
- 19.
There have been public charges of treason, subversion, and sabotage. Opponents were denounced as enemies of the people, and their views ridiculed as invertebrate or deranged.
- 20.
Channel Four, 7 January 2019.
References
Elgot, J. (2018, December 9). May in last-ditch bid to save Brexit deal despite growing mutiny. Guardian. Retrieved December 9, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/09/may-in-last-ditch-bid-to-save-brexit-deal-despite-growing-mutiny
Wikipedia. (2018). Jo Cox. Retrieved December 9, 2018, from https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Cox#Täter
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Adam, R.G. (2020). A Crystal Ball?. In: Brexit. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22225-3_5
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